"Oh, I know all about it! The subject of home is very attractive when one is alone in exile. I could hardly know more about you if I'd been a member of your schoolroom party. I used to lure Miles on to talk of old days. It kept us both occupied. Do you remember the occasion when you decided to starve yourself to death, because you imagined that you had been unjustly treated, and then got up in the middle of the first night to raid a cold chop from the larder? Or the time you vowed vengeance on Miles for cutting off the ends of your hair to make paint brushes, repented after you went to bed, and went to make it up, when he concluded you were playing ghosts, and nearly throttled you as a welcome?" Betty laughed, undecided between amusement and vexation. "It's too bad! He seems to have given me away all round. If he was going to tell tales, he might have told flattering ones. I am sure I was often very nice, or I was always sorry if I wasn't. I used to roast chestnuts and muffins, and eat oranges and peppermints with the door wide open to lure him back. They were dear old days! I am glad he remembered them, but it must have been boring for you. Did he--did he tell you--more things about me?" "Many more!" "Principally about me? More than about the others?" "You were his special chum. It was natural that he should speak most of you." "And--er--my letters! Did he read those aloud?" "Parts of them. I never saw them, of course, except--" "Except when?" "When he was ill. He could not read himself, and was anxious to hear the news. Three letters from you arrived during that time. He said it did not matter. That there would be no secrets in them--nothing you would not wish me to know." Betty flushed, cast an agonised thought back through the years, to try to remember the gist of those three missives, failed completely, and nervously twisted her fingers together. "There was one thing they would show you pretty plainly, which I'd rather have kept secret." "Yes?" "Myself?" She looked across the room with a flickering glance, and met Will Gerard's steady gaze. "Yes," he said slowly. "They showed me yourself!" That was all. Not another word, either of praise or blame. Did he hate her then--think her altogether flighty and contemptible, or had the letters been by chance good specimens of their number, and did he like them, and think her "nice"? The face told her nothing in its grave impenetrability. She felt herself blushing more deeply than ever, rallied all her powers with the determination that she would _not_ be stupid, and cried gaily--